Re-cycling NAS HDDs?

[gabster]

Hi Gang!

So I am building this new machine (not a NAS just a regular station), and I thought for the sake of economy, instead of buying HDDs, to use 2-3 drives out of my 5-drive NAS using RaidZ2.
Is that even possible? What would be a safe way of doing that without compromising the data I already have there?
It's like donating a kidney but functioning just fine with one - type of thing.

Thanks a lot!
gabi

 

[danb35]

What would be a safe way of doing that without compromising the data I already have there?

Not doing it. The disks you have are in there providing redundancy, and thus safety for your data. You can remove one disk and still have some redundancy. You can remove two disks and still have all your data, but no redundancy. Do you want to risk a read error on one of the remaining disks, and that trashing your data? I wouldn't think so--that's why you went for RAIDZ2 in the first place.

 

[gpsguy]

Listen to @danb35.

While you can't go to the kidney store to buy one, you can certainly get good deals on hard disks. Everyweek, I get ads from NewEgg, TigerDirect and Microcenter advertising hard disks. Black Friday is coming up and some of the e-tailers are already offering discounts.

 

[gabster]

Good point @danb35 and @gpsguy

That makes total sense. Thanks for the tips!!! Storage is cheap these days.

gabster

 

[Ericloewe]

While you can't go to the kidney store to buy one

You can, according to urban legends. Of course, those are started by people who know nothing about the world. I'm thinking especially of the "wake up minus kidney in a bathtub full of ice" one. Who comes up with such nonsense? Do they have any idea how hard it is to keep a decent stock of ice on hand? I'd have barely enough for a small gathering with my fridge's ice maker full. Filling a bathtub with ice would require industrial quantities of ice, which means that they need a guy tasked just with buying a literal truckload of ice at a gas station or wherever else bags of ice are sold, these days! What kind of criminal would agree to such nonsense?